Company description

Westward Gold Inc. (WG.CSE) is an emerging gold exploration company focused primarily on advancing the Toiyabe, Turquoise Canyon, and East Saddle Projects in the Cortez Hills area of Lander County, Nevada, along the prolific Battle Mountain-Eureka Trend. The company assembled these fully-contiguous properties over the last couple of years, and it now controls a dominant land package in the region, comprised of 463 claims covering over 3,830ha. The properties benefit from favourable host rocks, significant drill intercepts, a historical resource, permits in hand, and a robust pipeline of untested exploration targets. The projects are on trend with some of the largest deposits in the world (for example Cortez Hills, Goldrush, Pipeline), in one of the most attractive jurisdictions for mining investment. Westward also recently bolstered their portfolio with the strategic acquisition of 2 additional properties along the Carlin Trend (the Coyote and Rossi Projects), where it is one of few junior companies present in an area dominated by Nevada Gold Mines (Barrick / Newmont Joint Venture).

Westward Gold is led by founder, President and CEO Colin Moore, and co-founder and CFO Andrew Nelson. Mr. Moore (BSc Mining Eng., MBA) is a mining corporate finance professional with 15 years of industry experience spanning engineering, investment banking, and private equity. Most recently, he was a co-founder and director of Momentum Minerals (together with CFO Nelson), which was acquired by Westward Gold in July of 2021. Prior to that, he held positions on the investment teams of leading mining-focused private equity funds, first as a Vice President at Waterton and later at Pacific Road Capital. He also previously worked as an investment banker with Bank of Montreal’s Metals and Mining team.

Mr. Nelson (CPA) is an accounting and corporate finance professional with a decade of experience in mining and natural resources. He previously worked on the investment banking team at Dundee Securities, advising on merger and acquisitions for global mining companies through all phases of their development cycle, from greenfield exploration through to production. Following that, he was part of the team at Dundee Goodman Merchant Partners, a leading mining-focused merchant bank, where he was responsible for analyzing early-stage public mining ventures. He also worked as a financial auditor for Grant Thornton LLP and Davidson & Company LLP, auditing large, mid-tier, and small-cap mining companies.

Colin and Andrew are supported by VP Exploration David Browning (MSc Geology), with a wealth of experience working on Nevada gold projects, specifically designing exploration programs at projects along the Carlin, Battle Mountain-Eureka, and Walker Lane Trends. Management also reaps the benefits of a very experienced Board of Directors, and heavyweight technical advisors. Chairman Mark Monaghan (BA, BC) is a finance professional with 30 years of experience with global investment and merchant banks. Director David Kelley (MSc Geology and Geochemistry) is a geologist and geochemist with 30 years of exploration experience (Newmont, BHP, Gold Standard); he was directly involved in the discovery of several deposits around the world, and was responsible for developing the exploration program at Las Bambas.

It gets really interesting when looking at Westward’s advisory team, among them Steven Koehler, Richard Bedell and Terry Salman. Koehler was involved in no less than 11 Carlin-type gold discoveries along the Carlin- and Battle Mountain-Eureka trends in Nevada, of which 6 are now producing mines. He received the 2005 Thayer Lindsley award for his role in the original Cortez Hills discovery (10Moz+ Au). Bedell led the discovery of Long Canyon, which was ultimately sold to Newmont for $2.3B. Salman needs no introduction, as he was the founder of well-known Salman Partners, a broker specialized in financing exploration and mining companies. Westward will undoubtedly benefit from his excellent access to a large network of investors, funds and financiers.

Of Westward Gold’s 5 gold exploration properties in Nevada, Toiyabe is the flagship and the most advanced, as it has seen advanced exploration activities leading to a small historical resource of 173koz of gold at 1.2 g/t (2009). That historical resource is located close to the past-producing Toiyabe-Saddle mine, which is now controlled by Barrick. The company believes that the historical resource may just be the surface expression of a potential, much larger gold system looming at depth.

Earlier drilling at Toiyabe provided decent results near surface, including 19.8m @ 4.03g/t Au, 27.4m @ 2.21g/t Au and 42.7m @ 1.37g/t Au, but only 16% of all legacy drilling went beyond 180m depth. After interpreting the geological data from past and recent drill campaigns, Westward believes they are vectoring into an analogy of the Carlin down-dip model, which led to the discovery of very large deposits at depth. Indications to-date suggest the stratigraphy at Toiyabe resembles this model so far. Recent diamond drilling, funded by EMX Royalties in exchange for certain royalty buy-back rights, is testing up to 600m depth and will hopefully establish the targeted SSD Zone as a mineralized structure akin to the aforementioned model. First results of this campaign demonstrated that gold mineralization is present near-surface, and the company expects additional assays from the deeper zones within the next few weeks.

Management, the BoD and advisors hold 20.6% of the company, EMX Royalty 3.6%, vendor MinQuest 2.8%, First Mining Gold 5.4% and Keith Neumeyer 2% of outstanding shares. Management expects to attract some well-known names if current drilling is successful, as the story has already been brought to the attention of institutional investors. The current cash position is about C$500k, sufficient for ongoing programs in place; management estimates a new raise sometime in the near future in order to fund additional 2023 Phase II drilling guided by the upcoming results.

Shareprice Westward Gold: